TSMC’s U.S. Subsidies At Heart Of Controversial Commentary By U.S. & Taiwanese Academics

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The United States' multi-billion dollar effort to re-shore advanced leading edge semiconductor fabrication inside its borders can harm Taiwan's indigenous chip industry, believe academics in a new research paper. The passage of the U.S. Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS0 Act earmarks billions of dollars in subsidies for firms such as the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to set up high-end chip manufacturing facilities inside America.

While TSMC's most advanced chip foundry in the U.S. will be its facility in Arizona, over the long term, as other players such as Samsung and Intel also speed up their advancements, the bill's aim can see leading-edge processes of the future, equivalent to the advantage enjoyed by today's technologies such as 2-nanometer, manufactured inside American foundries.

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Specialization Is A Key Aspect Of Global Semiconductor Supply Chain Argue Academics From U.S. & Taiwan

Since it requires capital, expertise and licensing, the global semiconductor industry is dominated by a handful of players. On the design side of things, NVIDIA, Intel and AMD share the pie, while personal computing chips are primarily manufactured by Intel and TSMC. This means that the history of firms is the history of the industry.

TSMC's rise to become the world's most advanced chip manufacturing company was overseen by its founder, Morris Chang, and current CEO, C.C. Wei. Therefore, while Wei, who was leading the firm when it announced the new chip manufacturing facility in Phoenix, Arizona, remained cautiously optimistic at the time, Chang, who had retired, stayed true to his frank nature when commenting about his company's plans.

The TSMC founder had shared on multiple